Root to Rise

Finding Joy in the Wobble

Grow. Aspire. Elevate. Expand. Attain. Reach. 

These words can be used to describe a meteoric rise or a journey. Words that shimmer with momentum and possibility, each one pointing upward, forward, onward. They suggest a destination with the expectation of a definitive arrival - conjuring up the appealing idea that the end destination will have something good waiting for us. And yet, for all their potential, these words tell only half the story.

The other half lives closer to the ground.

Any honest account of a journey, whether physical or emotional,  must make room for the wobble. A lurch sideways, with moments of correction along the way, is the fun element of a journey. The stumble that arrives just when you thought you had found your footing can make you feel vulnerable but  these are not failures. Instead, they are the vital components of any journey.  Learning to embrace them, even to find joy within them, and to linger at these ‘stopover points’ may be the most yogi thing we can do.

This is why the phrase root to rise is used so often in yoga. It sounds paradoxical at first. Why would you think about going down when your intention is to go up? But the topsy turvy logic is both ancient and elegant. The higher you intend to reach, the more deliberately you must first connect with what is beneath you. The roots of a tree do not compete with its branches. They make the branches possible. Without depth below, there can be no height above.

In the physical practice of yoga, this principle is not abstract - it is immediate and essential. Before you extend, you ground. Before you lengthen, you press. You feel the floor beneath,  with your feet or your hands, and you actively engage with it. The earth pushes back. That relationship between your body and the ground (and in yoga, your mat) is where stability lives, and stability is what makes freedom of movement possible. This is why, during class, I have described yoga mats as magical, flying carpets,

It is what allows you to reach without toppling.

But here is what is easily forgotten: however high you rise, on your tiptoes, in a balance or in a peak pose that took months or years to approach - the ground is always below you. It does not move.  And I love that.  I love to wobble out of a pose because I am reminded of this place of safety. It does not withdraw its support because you have risen.  It offers reassurance. The earth remains patient and constant, ready to catch you.

I teach a yoga class of mixed ability, and it is one of the greatest joys of my week. The class has other trained teachers who bring their own discipline to their mats. And there is a student who chooses, every single week, to lie on her mat for the entire class. She is, clearly, the most yogic person in the room.

She has turned up. She understands, perhaps more instinctively than anyone, two things that yoga asks of us: the value of time, and the value of grounding. She has made a decision - conscious and deliberate, that being present on that mat, in whatever form that takes for her body and her life on that particular day, is enough. 

Yoga is not a performance. It is not measured in the height of your leg or the depth of your fold.  It is measured, if it is measured at all, in the quality of your attention and the honesty of your presence. 

I actively encourage my students to embrace the wobble and the experience of falling.  When we strip away the weight of perfectionism, we wobble together. Falling out of a pose provides information because it puts your body in honest conversation with gravity and reveals capability

There is also, if you let yourself feel it, genuine humour in the fall. Something releases when you tumble sideways out of a tree pose or find yourself suddenly sitting down from what was almost a warrior three. The laughter that follows is relief. The relief of discovering that the thing you feared, the loss of control, was not catastrophic. It was, in fact, rather funny.  And laughter is breathwork. The mat is still beneath you. The earth is still spinning, dependable and vast, entirely unbothered by our group wobbles.

That is the security I want my students to carry with them, on and off the mat. Not the hope of never falling, which is neither possible nor particularly interesting, but the security of knowing that the ground is always there. That beneath every courageous attempt to rise higher than you have before, the earth holds. It held before you tried. It will hold after you land.

This is what root to rise really means. It is an invitation to trust what is beneath you so completely that you are free to explore what is above. It is permission to be ambitious and grounded in the same breath. It is an acknowledgement that the wobble is not the opposite of the journey. Instead it is evidence that the journey is real, that you are actually moving and reacting to the beautiful uncertainty of it all.

So rise, yes. Grow, reach, aspire. But first, feel the ground beneath you. Press into it. Let it hold you.

And when you wobble (and you will wobble!) let yourself laugh. The mat is always there.

About the author: Jo Coldwell is  a yoga teacher, camper van enthusiast and runs Red Lion Books